Updating and sometimes even rewriting this set of tutorials (about editing video) for reasons unknown to me made me think about my resume.
My job at the grocery store kept me away from the computer. I tended to enjoy the times at the store when it was full of people and not enough staff (punched in and being paid to work) so much of my time was spent on the floor helping people to get their groceries and get back to their lives. It seemed like this was the ultimate purpose of the job there, to sell groceries to people in a manner that they would come back and buy more. The people that kept their jobs there were people that spent their time making personal phone calls and leaving the cashiers to fend for themselves. So maybe I got it all wrong and the real goal was something else. No matter whatelse, I enjoyed the customers and these busy times, usually.
I mentioned in my resume that I had experience with the computer in real time retail situations. I did not mention that all of them were good experiences; truthfully, most of them were. I did not mention also that a couple of times I lost it (not enough space in the resume format, for one thing); "it" being my dignity and control of the situation. I mention this now because I am showing on my web site how to and where to encode video portions.
In the afternoons, the little store would fill up with many different people from many different lives. Moms picking up the kids from the school could drop in and get some missing ingredients for the dinner, people coming home from work and recently off from a crazy commute; little local hoodlams funding their special projects or addictions by stealing the liquor so easy for the taking from the shelves there and of course, the beloved senior citizens from acrossed the road. On this one afternoon, one of my favorite and worse behaved old men was shopping at the store.
Interesting, smart and often grumpy, I am such a sucker for old guys like this one. One of these busy afternoons, the store was very busy. He gets confused easily when it is busy like this, me too. He put his receipt somewhere and forgot where. It had happened before. The cashier had given it to him, this fact I was reasonably certain of for the simple fact that it is easier to get rid of the silly things by giving it to the purchaser.
I was confused myself and trying to deal with all of the people and the few cashiers and baggers. Also, I had not gotten the information from the computer in this way in a long while and ended up running a report on all of the sales for the whole hour and waited as the right sale appeared. We were busy and I chose one of the most inefficient ways to get a report from the computer. He hounded me, this old guy. I should have been on a register also, the store was too busy. In the middle of everything, I ended up screaming at the top of my lungs at him. I really lost it -- not that I had it to begin with. By this time in this life, this old guy should have known himself enough not to tackle such a store at this sort of busy time -- or at least know enough to give the same sort of patience back that often he demands from the people trying to help him get his stuff and get home. Retired and unrestrained by many of the constraints that the other shoppers had at this time, he frustrated me beyond my ability. Yep, I screamed at him. I was not screaming at a sweet old guy, I was screaming at someone who did know better.
Finally the report spit out the correct sale and I gave the man a second copy of his purchases and a hug.
If someone had filmed this, they could use this Master Encoder dialog and perhaps even the instructions I gave them here to edit out the resolution of the problem and the hug. There is a real good chance that a better human than me could have handled the situation better; several of the people employed at the store at this time probably could have handled the situation better even. There is an equal chance that humans not so good could film this episode and easily cut out the parts where I restored everyones dignity. There were people employed there at the time who proved themselves capable of this also. I would not have done this to them, this I know -- I guess they know it as well.
Use these video options and my instructions in a way that does not hurt people. They do this sort of thing all of the time to political candidates and oh, hell -- anyone can get hit by bad and selfish editing of video frames. When you see video that is presented as fact, keep this in mind. I would like to think that I would not hurt you and try to show the whole story with these tools; it is the right thing.
No one is perfect. You can always get a piece of film and completely change the story by disposing of some of the story.